Mothering Years Go By Too Fast

On Parenting

August 25, 2007|By ANNETTE CLIFFORD

I started writing this column the year my youngest son went to kindergarten. This year, he started high school.

I didn't even drive him there the first day. He rode with his big brother. I was home to greet him at 3:30, though. He brushed past me to grab his football gear and asked me to take him right back for practice.

The job I do has changed a lot since August 1998, but the first-day feelings haven't, or so I found when I searched back for that off-to-kindergarten column, which read:

"Here is the nightmare. The big day has finally come. You are taking your youngest child, your baby, off to his first full day of school.

"Only, somehow, you lose track of him, turn your back and go off on some stupid errand. You forget to watch and hover for 10 seconds, and the moment is gone, he is off with the others, part of the pack, leaving you without even a wave or a trembling lip to mark the occasion.

"The day the last kid goes off to school is a day of endings as well as beginnings.

"Your life as the mother of little children is over. Now you are the mother of school-age children. Soon you will be the mother of teenagers, college kids.

"Your offspring are growing up and away at warp speed, while you are stuck in some nostalgic Land Before Time.

"You stand in the silent kitchen on this morning when the schoolyard has swallowed your entire brood, and yes, you are relieved. But you are more than a little sad, and even a little scared.

"You are relieved that you never have to listen to the Barney song again, yet suddenly those corny lyrics about great big hugs seem profound.

"You no longer have to put off that aerobics class, but suddenly the only exercise that appeals is extreme toddler holding.

"You no longer have crib sheets to wash, high chairs to de-scum, lost pacifiers to locate, or fossilized Cheerios to vacuum out of the corners, but suddenly the thought of an immaculate, empty house just makes you gloomy.

"You no longer have to spend umpteen hours in the pediatrician's office, but suddenly you'd give anything for one more whiff of Eau de Amoxicillin.

"You no longer have an excuse for not producing the great American novel, but the only fiction you can bear to contemplate is "Good Night, Moon."

"You no longer have to play endless rounds of Go Fish or spend the early afternoon gracefully losing at Chutes and Ladders, but Solitaire is a scary substitute.

"You know that this wistful phase will pass, that you will get a life, join a club, take a class, volunteer, work, reinvent yourself as someone who no longer has to be in the pick-up lane at nursery school by noon.

"But just for now, just for this morning, while the refrigerator hums and the dishwasher sighs, you sit down and spill a few drops of salt in your coffee."

A few of those predictions from the previous century turned out to be false.

The house was never, ever immaculate. There was no time for Solitaire. Or the novel.

Others proved true. I got a life, joined a club, volunteered, worked. But mostly I was right about this: A mother's life passes at warp speed.